Isaac Asimov's Worlds of Fantasy. Book 6: Mythical Beasties

Sphinx

An obvious symbol of divine strength might be a human body with a lion's head, or, in reverse, a lion's body with a human head. The lion. after all. was a particularly feared predator, a.'id the ' 'king of beasts.''

The Greek griffins, as f explained earlier, were creatures with the torso of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. An only slightly different composite was one with the torso of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the head and breasts of a woman.

Such a creature was pictured as a fearsome monster from whose grasp no human being could escape. It was called a ' 'sphinx'' from a Greek word meaning ' 'to hold tightly."

The most famous sphinx in the Greek myths was one that existed just outside the city of Thebes and that stopped travelers going to that city. It posed a problem to them:

"What goes on four legs in the morning, on two at won, and on three in the evening?" Failure to answer correctly meant death. The Greek hero Oedipus, however, guessed correctly that the answer was the human being, who crawled on all fours in the morning of life, stood upright on two legs in maturity, and needed a cane in old age. The sphinx then killed itself in frustration.

The Egyptians would occasionally build lions with the heads of reigning monarchs, simply to show the strength of the monarch and, through him, of the nation. This was sympathetic magic. Showing the nation to be strong would keep it strong in actuality. (We're familiar with that sort of thing today, too.) The most famous Egyptian sphinx is the very large Great Sphinx built in connection with the Great PyramidThis Egyptian sphinx is featured in the following story.